Imagine leaving your home country behind to start over in the United States.

For many, that means one word: freedom.

“I look at the building as, symbolically, of a whole nation of people that chose to abandon their homeland in order to find freedom elsewhere,” said José Azel , a Cuban political exile.

Azel fled his home country in 1961 as a 13-year-old through Operation Pedro Pan — when more than 14,000 Cuban children came to the U.S. without their parents. Today, Azel writes and lectures about Cuba’s politics, society and economy.

He was one of more than 350 people interviewed for Miami Dade College’s new oral history project at the renovated Freedom Tower in downtown Miami.

“[The building] is symbolic of the sacrifices that people are willing to make in order to find fre

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